In Spite of Thunderstorms
by Becky215
Summary: Margaret and Thornton share a heart-to-heart conversation on the day of her father's funeral. AU.


_Disclaimer_: No copyright infringement is intended.

_Author's Note: In the novel of __North and South__, Gaskell wrote, "...That mournful Wednesday, when Mr. Hale was to be interred, far away from either of the homes he had known in life, and far away from the wife who lay lonely among strangers (and this last was Margaret's great trouble, for she thought that if she had not given way to that overwhelming stupor during the first sad days, she could have arranged things otherwise)..." This story is a brief exploration of what might have happened if Margaret had, indeed, arranged things "otherwise" for a funeral in Milton_. --CH

**In Spite of Thunderstorms**

**by Becky215**

It was a cloudy day, and the wind hardly shook the limp trees that guarded the cemetery. A handful of carriages waited at the base of the hill as the mourners picked their way down the dusty path. The rain had abated, but the rumble of thunder in the distance was ominous and deep.

Margaret stood near the parson, smiling feebly as friends and family pressed her hand and cupped her cheek with feeble encouragements.

"He was a good man," said one.

"You can call on us for anything," said another.

It was a thin party. Mr. Bell promised to call on Margaret in only a few days' time after other affairs had been settled. Dixon dabbed her eyes with a well-worn linen handkerchief but kept to the corner with the Higgins family and the workers who'd stopped to pay their respects to the Hale family. Aunt Shaw had come from London in a cloud of black damask, arriving only just in time for the afternoon services as she swept into the house on Crampton Street. The Thorntons stood close to the path, cloaked in black as they watched the clouds pass over their town. A handful of flowers lay at the graveside, and soon the minister made his way down the path with his book in hand.

Margaret wore the same black gown she'd worn to her mother's funeral only a few weeks earlier. It felt strange to stand beside the small grey stone that bore their names, to be so close to them but unable to speak their names. She'd wept for them both already and wondered if she could bear another tear; she thought of all that she'd lost and feared that there was nothing left to be gained.

She missed talking to her mother, holding her frail hand and listening to stories of long-forgotten girlhood and summers of daisies. She ached to hear her father's voice, to touch the books he'd marked and caressed with each turn of his fingers. She wanted her brother to be near, to stand with her in this cold breeze so she might see her grief mirrored in his eyes. Part of her wanted to scream into thick sky that crouched overhead; for a moment she imagined that her voice would get lost in the smoke and dust, that she could tell the sky a secret and watch it disappear into nothing.

Thornton watched her from across the lawn. His mother's hand was warm in the crook of his arm, but he felt the icy wind slipping across the headstones. Winter was becoming a memory, but the air was dense with the last gasp of frost. He fancied that her gown could hardly protect her from the weather and the cold thoughts that capture one's mind on such a day as this. He remembered his own father's funeral; he'd stood beside his mother, holding onto the folds of her skirt while little Fanny's sweaty palm slipped against his fingers. They'd listened numbly as a minister talked of forgiveness in heaven; he'd wanted to shout and claw at the ghosts that had begun chasing him into his dreams.

"It's a day to be alone, John," Hannah Thornton whispered huskily. He wondered how she could read his thoughts, but he nodded and said, "Is it not a day to be with friends, too? To know the comfort of the flock, so to speak?" The minister had spent the better part of half an hour talking about the value of friendship and family in times of grief, but few failed to notice the irony of his words in the meager population of souls at the funeral.

"It is a day to be with one's thoughts and remember what has been lost," she said shortly. Thornton knew his mother's opinions on Margaret, and in many ways he envied them. He wanted to dislike her. He hoped each day that he would wake to discover that his first thought was not of the brown curls that slipped out of their pins, the soft fingers that caressed the pleats of her gown or the rim of a teacup, the gentle smile that was a reward in its radiance. He didn't want to think of her, but he'd resigned himself to the fact that he could not help it.

He marveled that she could look so lovely on such a dreary day. The gossamer ribbon of her bonnet trailed behind her, dancing in the breeze as she slowly rubbed her gloved hands together. He heard the rustle of skirts and the crunch of footsteps behind him; most of the party was leaving, and he knew that he ought to follow them to the carriages. His mother tugged gently on his elbow, but he was arrested by the sudden glimmer of a single tear on Margaret's cheek.

"A moment," he murmured, patting Hannah Thornton's hand as he slipped away from her. He never heard his mother's sigh, nor did he know that she lingered in her place before turning towards the pathway. He walked slowly towards Margaret, his hands in his pockets as he measured the steps between them.

He'd heard the feeble regrets and sentiments of the other guests; he knew that Margaret cared little for the flowers or the empty words of a minister who had never even shaken her father's hand when he was alive. He wondered what he should say to coax a gentle word from her, but more than that he wondered why he should be so drawn to her side. He could hear his conscience rallying against every footstep; it begged him to remember her eyes in the darkness as she clung to the stranger at the station, her cruel rejection of his heartfelt proposal, the scorn that had peppered her words in even their earlier conversations.

He heard the voice, but his heart turned away from it. He forgot the pain and bitterness of the past. In that moment, he looked at her with new eyes, drunk on the sweet curve of her cheek and the sadness he wanted to take upon himself so she might smile again. Her tears seemed to baptize the silence in a new beginning.

He said nothing, but he was startled when she spoke first.

"My father would have been very happy that you came today," she said softly. She didn't move to wipe away the tears that slipped down her cheeks; her emotions were naked before him, and for an instant he wondered if his heart might break once again if she turned to him. "He was glad to have counted you as a friend, when he was alive."

Those words were tart and bitter on her tongue. She knew that her father was gone, and she could accept it. She could not accept that she'd been left alone in a world that did not quite know what to do with her. She did not want to go back to London, but a life alone in Milton with little fortune would create nothing she could cling to. She loved Edith and her aunt, but the thought of living in their home, her life contained in only a few small rooms, seemed a betrayal of her own parents' hopes and dreams. She knew that she might marry, but suddenly she was reaching out for everything she could not have.

She was reaching out to him.

She'd heard him when he moved closer; the sound of his step caught the breath in her throat, and she'd wanted to weep again for thinking of his deep voice instead of the loss of her poor father. She felt guilty and traitorous, but for a thin moment she wanted only to fall into John Thornton's arms so the day might have some warmth.

"He was a good man. He taught me so many things," Thornton said slowly.

"Yes. That was one of his talents," she mused, gazing over the headstones to spy the world beneath the hills. She imagined Thornton over her shoulder, viewing the same vista with pride and joy. She knew he that he did not want to be talking to her; she knew what cruel images had occupied his thoughts, what he imagined had happened at the train station and his disgust at her refusal of his proposal. She hated that only cruel obligation should bring him to her side, and she was suddenly embarrassed of the tears she could not fight. "I'm sorry to have been crying like this."

"Why should you be sorry?" he asked. "I'd argue with any man who thinks a daughter shouldn't cry on the day she buries her father." His mother had been stoic when they buried his father; Fanny sniffled and sobbed like any four year old might do, but John Thornton had watched the white roses wilt as the weight of shame and anger burned in his throat.

"Father would be so disappointed in my thoughts today. He always said that…that death is something to rejoice in. Even when Mother died, we were all so upset, but he touched my shoulder and said we should be glad that she's at home in heaven." Her words were almost a whisper, and Thornton felt like an intruder as she shared such private thoughts. He wanted to step away and leave her to the peace of her memories, but more than that he wanted to be near her, to smell her tears and taste the air around her.

"It's fitting that we should have brought him back. Mr. Bell suggested that we bury him in Oxford, near the church. He even offered to see to all the arrangements, but this is his home. Next to her." She touched the cold stone with her finger, tracing a line from her father's name to her mother's. "He couldn't bear it anymore without Mother."

"Home is where the heart is," Thornton ventured quietly.

"To borrow a phrase, yes," she replied. "You know, for the longest time I've been almost envious of you and your mother. Even envious of your sister."

"Envious of Fanny?" he smiled softly. "I think she'd like that."

"Yes. I keep thinking that it must be so lovely to _know_ where home is, to have roots that are too deep to be plucked from the ground on a whim. Milton is your home, and you belong to it, just as it seems to belong to you," she said, smiling feebly as she met his eye. She meant those words with no hostility or accusation; she was being honest. "As for me, I was born in Helstone, wandered to London, and now I'm here for only a few more days, I imagine. I scarcely know what address I ought to write in my letters."

"Surely you'll prefer London to Milton's society." He said it in hopes that she might refute him. For a breathless instant, he created a picture of her in his mind. She was standing on the balcony at Marlborough Mills, not unlike the fated afternoon when she'd reached out to the workers in the yard, but it was different in his mind. She wore a fresh shade of green and smiled to him over her shoulder with her hands spread out to the sun in a perfect silhouette of springtime. In that image, the world was clean and the day was warm. In that moment, she was his and he could reach out to touch her.

It was only a daydream, and suddenly he was beside her again, watching their breath dance lazily in front of their lips as they talked of hearth and home.

"Perhaps," she sighed. She turned and caught his gaze. She marveled again at the color of his eyes; she often wondered how an artist might capture the shade on a palate. A mix of silver and cerulean, touched with turquoise and whispers of emerald green. His eyes were the color of the sky, and she wanted only to take flight into that endless horizon of crystal blue.

She smiled, trapped between the loss of her father and the loss of the love she craved from the man beside her, and a quiet laugh tripped over her lips. He looked at her curiously, causing her to blush and murmur, "It's only so strange."

"What?"

"That we should all run through life, making decisions and fretting over the silliest things we can find, when we end up just…pitifully killing each other in the end." It was a dark conclusion, and Thornton worried that her father's death had snuffed out the light he'd so admired in Margaret. He watched her carefully; her eyes darted across the headstone, lovingly caressing each name and number on the marble slab.

"What do you mean, Miss Hale?"

"Bessie Higgins died because she had to work so her family could eat. The Boucher children are orphans because their father couldn't bear to face their starving faces and their mother couldn't bear to be without the father. Father died because he couldn't bear to live in a world without my mother. It's as though…"

"As though loving will only kill us in the end?" Thornton asked.

She saw the elegant curve of his smile, and suddenly the tears were falling once again. "Oh, yes. That is just what I meant," she said breathlessly. His gentle gaze illustrated her argument; she ached to think that she might never see him again if she removed to London.

Thornton was captivated by the silence they cradled between them. He remembered the night after she'd rejected his proposal of marriage. He'd tossed fitfully in his chamber, aching for sleep that refused to take him into its arms. Laying in the dark, he'd imagined her smile and the dark luxury of her eyes. The hours passed him by as each dream and hope shattered into helpless shards in his heart. His mother had said that she hated Margaret Hale, and in the long distant hours of that cold night, he'd wished in vain that he could hate her, too. The pain of loving her was unbearable, and when the sun found him in the morning, he looked at the world with a sneer.

He thought of his pain, but his thoughts fell upon a verse from his last meeting with Richard Hale. Sensing that his pupil was in poor spirits, Hale had thumbed through the Bible and offered a simple psalm for his friend's consideration.

"Just something to think on, John," he'd said, patting Thornton's shoulder with friendly affection as he poured another cup of tea. Thornton had read the passage and thought little of it at the time; he wondered now if his friend had sensed more of his student's relationship with Margaret than he'd intimated.

"What are you thinking?" Margaret asked, stirring him from his thoughts. "I'm sorry to be so tragically melancholy. I suppose I'm just thinking my thoughts aloud today."

"It's quite alright," Thornton replied. "I was actually remembering my last lesson with your father, before he died. He had me read a psalm, and for some reason it's staying with me today. 'Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.'"

Margaret hummed softly, a mixture of laughter and thoughtfulness. "Tears and laughter. How curious that they should go hand in hand."

"I can imagine stranger partnerships," he said. Extending his arm, he asked if he might escort her down to the carriages. She nodded but turned to the grave once again. Pressing a soft kiss to her fingers, she touched the stone with a loving smile.

"Goodbye, Father," she whispered.

They walked slowly down the path, each lost with their thoughts as the sun sank behind the hills. "It's strange. I can imagine so many sunny days since I've been in Milton, but rarely does it ever seem warm in the daytime," she sighed.

"It comes with the seasons, I suppose."

"You were quite a friend to my father, Mr. Thornton. I know he valued your company, and again I'm so grateful that you came to the service today."

"Nothing could have kept me from attending."

"I hope you'll excuse my darker thoughts today. I-"

"Think nothing of it, Miss Hale. Nothing at all," he said kindly.

"I might walk home. It isn't an unpleasant day."

"Perhaps, but I think we're expecting a storm. You wouldn't want to be caught up in the thunder," he reasoned. Margaret nodded and tightened her hold on his arm; she was reluctant to see him leave, desperate to know what else he might have to say, and frightened to wonder if there could be a second chance for his affections.

"The soul of man is immortal and imperishable," Thornton said suddenly. Meeting the question in her eyes, he continued, "Plato. I was trying to remember the exact quotation earlier today. It seems fitting."

"Even in light of thunderstorms?" she smiled.

"Especially in light of thunderstorms," he nodded.

Hannah Thornton stood primly with her daughter at the base of the hill; she turned as her son descended the path with Miss Hale, but she noticed the look in his eye as he passed her into her carriage, pressing her hand with a half-smile that was barely noticed to anyone but his mother.

"Do you imagine Miss Hale will be leaving Milton now, Mother?" Fanny asked irritably. Her fingers were cold, and the muted greys and blacks of the day had thrust her into a sullen mood.

Her mother watched as John strode down the path to join his family. She recognized the hope in her son's eyes and wondered how long that light might burn before Miss Hale snuffed it out once again. She ached for her son; she wanted a new beginning for him, but she feared that he was delighted with the dreams he could find in Miss Hale's dark eyes.

"I certainly hope so, Fanny."

**********

Thanks for reading, y'all! --CH


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